Katherine Rundell was thrilled by the idea of plunging back into the world of Mowgli, Bagheera and Mother Wolf ... but could she create a prequel to The Jungle Book without killing the magic?
There are a few books for children that operate as a type of personality test. One is The Wind in the Willows: every person is a Ratty, a Mole, a Toad or a Badger. Another is Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book: in each of us is a constellation of Baloo, Bagheera, Mother Wolf, Kaa and Shere Khan: the book is a kind of Myers Briggs personality test for the childhood soul.
Many, perhaps most, people first come to The Jungle Book through the 1967 Disney animation. There’s a great deal to admire about the film, but it’s a very different beast; Walt Disney famously gave one of his screenwriters a copy of the book, saying: “The first thing I want you to do is not to read it.” The film is sunlit; the book is darker, sly and knowing where the Disney is optimistic, written with human venality full in mind. As a child I was drawn to the bookprecisely because it did not attempt to convince me that we are better than we are and thereby wrangle me indirectly into good behaviour. Mowgli was what I knew, at the age of eight, the best children were: stubborn, boastful, loving, egotistical, loyal, brave and wild. You wouldn’t necessarily like Mowgli were you to meet him on a bad day, but you would not be able to ignore how intensely alive he was.
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